Crystal Date format problem 1

[Snoopyza]

A date format problem occurs on the crystal report form of customer statements. When printing statements, if the date range of an invoice, cr note or receipt falls from 1st - 12th calender day it will format the date in an American standard, however if the date falls from 13th calender day onwards it will print the date in an Australian format.

This has been an ongoing problem from the day we went live with Macola

 

[abaldwin]

Couple of questions.

1. Where are you. U.S. or Australia?
2. What version of Macola and Crystal?
3. What is the formula you are using to get a date if in 7.6?


Thanks

Andy

Andy Baldwin

 

[maccrystal]

The Macola uses their own Number to date function (macolanumbertodate). Try replacing the date function with NumbertoDate and see if the date format is reported correctly.

http://www.appstratinc.com

 

[Snoopyza]

1. Based in Australia
2. Macola Ver 7.0.1.200
3. Crystal Ver CRW32 7.0.200.4

 

[crystalreporting]

Either replace the NumberToDate UFL (assuming that is what you are using) or replace it with a formula that performs the same function. You need to provide us with some more info - look at the Crystal report in the Crystal designer, and tell us what is in the formula that displays the date.

Peter Shirley

http://www.linkcorp.com

 

[Snoopyza]

Thank you for your input, I just received this from Macola:

Support:
This is a reported bug. The bug number is 01.841.438. The workaround for this right now would be to find the formula that uses the MACOLANumberToDate function and change it to the NumberToDate function under additional functions.

 

[MacolaHelp]

If I remember correctly, you had to download the NumberToDate ufl from Crystal's website for version 7x since the macola distributed version has the macolaNumberToDate. I don't think it shipped with the product. I just checked the web & it is @ support.businessobjects.com, then use the advanced search for ufl & enter the version, etc. Then download the ufl.

If you are using the ICR statement and want all users to have the same report instead of having one for each user, here is how I handle it:

copy rpts\ar\arstmt.rpt or arstmtd.rpt to a new name: this preserves the default macola report. Make all design changes to the rpt. You must have ERS to modify page 1 w/the selection criteria & I haven't quite gotten my head around that one. After saving the changes you want, be sure to save a copy of it since future macola updates will overwrite the fixes, mods you created.

kscheeler, crystalreporting, dgillz & maccrystal have provided valuable input here on some ICR functions & Crystal in general. I used to think that it was better to start w/a macola ICR & modify for my needs. As I do more reports & understand crystal better, I think I do better starting from scratch. However, something like statements or agings where you perform math on the fly seem more difficult, so I would probably fix the existing ICR. You may also want to visit the crystal forum(s) here at tektips to avoid the macola-specific ufls, especially since they seem to go away in version 9.

 

[dgillz]

Macolahelp,

Please clarify.....what goes away in version 9? The macola UFLs or UFLs in general?

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[MacolaHelp]

see the thread: macola (crystal addt'l functions). Peter Shirley (Crystalreporting) seems to have a handle on this transition to v9 Cyrstal. I'd love to hear what his thoughts are about ufls in general. In fact, one of my clients is concerned about their investment in crystal reports since v9 seems to take everything away that we have come to count upon in crystal reports compiled as exe files.

 

[dgillz]

UFLs work fine in 9, including the Macola UFL. In fact I have even tested a UFL in v10 of crystal and it works fine.

On compiled reports, I wish they still offered this, but there is no need to have one, just get a crystal reports viewer. There are tons of them out there.

You can also still place a crystal report in a VB project and run it as an .exe

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[crystalreporting]

I can clarify this - UFL's are still supported in v9.0 and v10.0, but the function editor in conjunction with the repository allows you to duplicate the functionality of UFL's without the complexity, and the hassle. As far as compiled reports go, they are not supported in v9.0 or v10.0. In reality, I wont miss them - they were more trouble than they were worth. I'm not a big fan of third-party viewers, however there are numerous ones available (Hammerlaunch, Visual Cut etc.) if you decide that's the way to go. Exepect the same sort of problems with a third-party viewer as you got with compiled reports - the workstations must have access to the same components as the report did when it was designed - including UFL's.

Web-enabling Crystal reports is simple and straighforward. It's seems like black-magic at first, but it is by far the cleanest way - especially as you are largely taking away the need to have any Crystal specific components on the workstation. Crystal Enterprise is too complex and expensive for most Macola users, but Crystal's RAS (Report Application Server) is a good, and simple alternative - it even interprets the RPT files for parameters and creates a web-viewable prompting page to capture them. Kind of a web version of the compiled reports feature. Another method is to code the ASP pages yourself. Again, sounds complex, but it's not - sample code is available on Crystal's website (e.g. aspxmps85.exe) and the only other component you need is IIS.

Peter Shirley

http://www.linkcorp.com

 

[MacolaHelp]

crystalreporting: But how much $$ are we talking about for this web enabling in v9? One of my clients bought enterprise for v8.5 to do web publishing & their minimum investment was a processor based license at 15k+. For them, it makes sense in how they use crystal and they truly do web publishing outside their organization. But most of my clients use cyrstal reports internally for business support decisions. Once the workstations have the crystal client installed, the compiled exe works great in 7 or 8.5. You can put them on pwe tabs, you can add to visual menu builder, put in a shared network folder, send to a desktop. At $500 for a single user or $1700 for a 5 user, it's pretty cost effective. Especially because most organizations have only a handful of people who can really understand and generate reports effectively. Are you suggesting that the ongoing workstation maintenance with web enabling saves in the long run? I can see it for a 200 user site. But for a 10 user site? Is the RAS more economically priced for smaller organizations that still want customized reporting for their businesses?

And what about the event manager that is supposed to be able to fire off crystal report generation as events at certain times of day or night? Anybody tried it yet? I'm anxious to see if it will work.

 

[pticarl]

We have been using Event Manager for the past 6 months now and I am fairly pleased with the product. There are some minor annoyances that I would like to see fixed in future releases, as well as some deficiencies in documentation and support, but for the most part it has been very effective for us.

I believe that I saw a link for a dl'able demo version off of Vineyardsoft's site the other day. That might be a place for you to start.

 

[dgillz]

If you want to schedule crystal reports, there is a much more cost effective way of doing this versus the Evant Manager. Check out

http://www.milletsoftware.com.

I have their product Visual CUT at a couple of clients and it is awesome. Only $225 too.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[crystalreporting]

Like I said in my original post - I'm not a big fan of third-party viewers, particularly for viewing or printing 'business critical' reports. RAS is a light version of Crystal Enterprise - again, Crystal Enterprise is simply overkill for most Macola users - both in complexity and cost. RAS is a much simpler, single processor solution for automatically web-enabling reports - it is extremely easy to configure with only a single screen of options. And yes, it is considerably cheaper than Crystal Enterprise. You basically tell RAS where the reports folder is, and that's it. In conjunction with IIS, RAS interprets the RPT files below the nominated folder - sub folders are shown as links, so you can logically group reports. If a report is clicked on, and it has parameters, these are displayed in a web format, complete with drop downs for dates and lists.

Peter Shirley

http://www.linkcorp.com

 

[MacolaHelp]

Talked w/Business Objects (formerly seagate, crystal, etc) & found that compiled reports is considered a development environment for v8.5 & I must upgrade to v10 developer to have questions answered. Upgrade from 8.5 professional to v10 developer is $315 & the RAS engine comes with it & a 5 user concurrent enterprise "light". They weren't clear on the status of ufls. Sounds like Don was able to get the ufls we already have used to work. Was this in both crystal reports written from scratch & in ICRs?

This news from a support call I logged re using terminal services:
I would also like to mention that we do not support using Crystal Reports
8.5 or Compiled Reports through Terminal Server. We can attempt to assist
you on a best effort basis if you do choose to upgrade to CR8.5 Developer,
however we can not guarantee that we will be able to resolve any issues
involving terminal server.

Wierd. So many companies are using terminal & citrix now, why would they take this position? Or maybe they are just trying to forestall any support issues by saying if it doesn't run, that we gave it our best shot. I would rather not add a web server into my organization when I already have perfectly good terminal servers. But, it seems this is the direction Crystal is going. They have indicated that the re-writing to switch to unicode is what precipitated these changes.

The sales folks at Business Objects seem to think this should be a painless migration for existing crystal reports users. I think it sounds like a fairly large undertaking for a small network (25-50 workstations) w/only a handful of crystal reports that need to be run regularly for most of their macola users (10-15).

 

[crystalreporting]

Hmmm - I'm confused - it was my understanding that Crystal were not supporting compiled reports AT ALL. Regardless of version. Again, my understanding was that it was supported only in v6 and v7. Are you sure they're not referring to the compiled reports option when they talk about Crystal support and Terminal Server? As far us UFL's go, read my earlier post in this same thread. On your last paragraph you refer to a 'painless migration' - If you're talking specifically about converting from compiled reports to RAS for viewing reports - I agree, it is painless.

Peter Shirley

http://www.linkcorp.com

 

[dgillz]

Peter,

Compiles reports are available in version 8 and 8.5, but you have to download the report compiling and distribution tool -- it no longer is shipped with the crystal CD.

Having said that, I have not had a chance to check this out since the acquisition of Crystal Decisions by Business Objects. I hope this is still available.

In version 9 and 10, it is not available, however a crystal report viewer is the answer, IMHO.

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Exact Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.trianglepartners.com

 

[crystalreporting]

That I knew - I was questioning the support of the compilation and distribution tools. Given that CR6 and CR7 are no longer supported, I was of the understanding that compiled reports were no longer supported i.e. they were a downloadable add-in, but unsupported in CR8 and CR8.5.

Peter Shirley

http://www.linkcorp.com

 

[maccrystal]

Compiled reports are supported in 8.5 as long as you have the developer copy. Compiled reports are not supported on 8.5 Professional or standard, but they do seem to work and it does violate the license agreement.

http://www.appstratinc.com